Music Saturday, January 26
Sera Cahoone, Ryan Jeffrey
Sat., Jan. 26, 7 p.m.Rock, Pop, Etc
Sera Cahoone named her recent third solo album, Deer Creek Canyon (Sub Pop), after a park near where she grew up in Colorado; in the mid-90s she moved to Seattle, where she still lives, and played drums in Carissa’s Wierd, Band of Horses, and other groups. Almost every song on Deer Creek Canyon expresses a longing for home, familiarity, and companionship, whether she’s literally yearning for a place (on the title track) or struggling with the pull of romantic nostalgia (on “Rumpshaker” she sings, “But now that I’m here I don’t know why I came at all”). As with her previous records, Cahoone’s sometimes wispy, sometimes twangy folk-rock flirts dangerously with ethereal fluff a la Sarah McLachlan, but she saves her songs with the directness of her writing and the leanness of the arrangements. —Peter Margasak Ryan Jeffrey opens.
$10
773-525-2508Casket Lottery, Maps for Travelers, Sweet Cobra, Jar'd Loose
Sat., Jan. 26, 9 p.m.Rock, Pop, Etc
If you’re a forlorn thirtysomething susceptible to nostalgia and still partial to early-aughts emocore—the kind that’s heavy on thick, twangy bass and doleful, out-of-key vocals with syllables drawn out like thiiiiiiiiisss!—the past five years have been pretty kind. Midwestern staples such as Small Brown Bike, Braid, and the Get Up Kids have re-formed and released new material, and just last year Kansas City’s Casket Lottery (who broke up in 2006) did the same, reintroducing their relatively proggy brand of emo with last fall’s Real Fear (No Sleep)—piano and second guitar now included. Having evolved into their present shape from that of a metalcore pillar a la Coalesce (who also exist again), Casket Lottery have a knack for playing potent, intricate guitar licks and getting as tough as the raspy vocal harmonies of Nathan Ellis and Stacy Hilt allow. Their 2000 release Moving Mountains stands toe-to-toe with anything from that era, and despite 2013’s expanded lineup and the visible gray hair on the heads of the band’s front men, the mature and thoughtful Real Fear can match the spirit of the best material in Casket Lottery’s catalog—aches and pains and all. —Kevin Warwick Maps for Travelers, Sweet Cobra, and Jar’d Loose open.
$10
Chicago Afrobeat Project, Nick & the Ovorols
Sat., Jan. 26, 9:30 p.m.International
Chicago Afrobeat Project—arguably the midwest’s best practitioners of the funky style pioneered more than four decades ago by Nigerian national hero Fela Kuti—adapt Afrobeat to a wide range of music on their new album, Nyash Up! (CAbP Music), including songs by local free-jazz combo the Vandermark 5, Brazilian pop thrush Ceu, and Led Zeppelin. In nearly every case the material has been so heavily remade that the only trace of the original is the occasional lyric or indelible lick—the bass line in Fugazi’s “Waiting Room,” for instance, or the vocals of guest singer Ugochi on Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues.” CABP definitely have Fela’s sound down pat—they even fuse his “Just Like That” with Radiohead’s “I Might Be Wrong” on the opening track—but their take on it sometimes feels self-conscious and bland. And it doesn’t help that local rapper S. Squair Blaq adds some verses to the Gaye cover that back down from Fela’s radical politics to rather timidly demand an end to the war on the middle class—it sounds depressingly like an uninspired Obama stump speech. —Peter Margasak Nick & the Ovorols open.
$10
Winter Block Party for Hip Hop Arts
Sat., Jan. 26, 12 p.m.Miscellaneous
This city has a long, pretty romantic history with hip-hop. Celebrate the genre's past and future in Chicago at the fifth annual Winter Block Party for Hip Hop Arts, a day of dance battles, poetry slams, and a screening of Benji, the heart-wrenching documentary about Simeon basketball star Ben Wilson's 1984 murder. And there's music, naturally. In the evening, an 18-and-up show features eight-piece hip-hop band Sidewalk Chalk, emcee Psalm One, and rappers ADD-2 and Saba.
free from noon til 6 PM, $15 beginning at 7 PM
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